Elgar - His Music : Symphony No 2 in E flat major (to the memory of) King Edward VII A more detailed account of the Second Symphony can be found elsewhere on this site. Although the second symphony followed the first by only three years, in the intervening period the world and Elgar had changed. The ebullient, confident mood of the early years of the century was dying, the tensions that culminated in the First World War were beginning to emerge and, by the time of the symphony's first performance, King Edward VII had also died. While the symphony was well received by most standards, the audience's response to the first performance was polite and restrained in comparison to the uninhibited reception given to its predecessor, leading Elgar to liken them to stuffed pigs. In some respects, this symphony has never fully recovered from that start - it is probably the less popular and less frequently performed of the two symphonies despite being melodically more inventive and varied than the first symphony . This may be because it is the more complex work.

Rather than a single theme recurring in all four movements, structural unity is achieved through extensive cross-references between movements, most dramatically when the rather ghostly theme from the first movement re-emerges as a frenzied outburst in the middle of the rondo. And there is a marked contrast in mood. In place of the lyrical dreaminess of the first symphony 's adagio, the second contains a somewhat sombre funeral march. (Many assumed this to be in memory of the recently deceased king, but sketches of the movement exist from some years before. Elgar probably composed the theme as a tribute to his friend Alfred Rodewald, the Liverpool businessman who conducted the first performance of the first two Pomp and Circumstance marches in 1901 and who died two years later at the age of 43.) And in contrast to the jaunty confidence of the first symphony , the second has an inner restlessness and mood of conflict which is only resolved when, in the closing minutes, the "spirit of delight" theme which opens the symphony returns to bestow a satisfying tranquility.

Return to : BBC Philharmonic/Mena review – monumental and authoritative | Music | The Guardian BBC Philharmonic/Mena review – monumental and authoritative 4 / 5 stars Bridgewater Hall, Manchester Garrick Ohlsson’s towering account of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto was followed by a ferocious rendition of Elgar’s Second Symphony Ferocity unleashed … Juanjo Mena. Photograph: Chris Christodolou/BBC Monday 17 November 2014 10.59 EST Last modified on Wednesday 19 November 2014 08.44 EST Share on Messenger Close If there were a Mount Rushmore-styled monument to American Chopin interpreters, whose image would appear on the side of the mountain? Murray Perahia would have to be up there along with Emanuel Ax. But Garrick Ohlsson , who in 1970 became the only American to take first prize at the international Chopin competition , might tower above them all. Ohlsson, who carries an air of senatorial authority at the keyboard, has a countenance that demands to be carved in stone.

For some people, Chopin means moonlight and mystery; for Ohlsson, the composer clearly means business. His reading of the First Piano Concerto was not wholly anti-romantic – the contours of the central larghetto were softened by a fine degree of mist – but Ohlsson is an articulate, admirably precise pianist who prefers to keep the structure visible at all times. First performed in 1911, Elgar’s Second Symphony was dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII; and while its lugubrious character has often been interpreted as an elegy for the passing of the Edwardian era, hearing the symphony in the context of Armistice week made Elgar’s writing seem uncannily prophetic. The largo, in which a plaintive solo oboe floats upon a sea of grief, sounded like a prediction of the mass mourning to come, while the ferocity unleashed by Juanjo Mena in the rondo seemed to push the orchestra ever closer to the edge, as if presaging a world poised on the brink of disaster.

It was heartening to see the hall full of children as part of the BBC Philharmonic’s family ticketing scheme , and encouraging to think that Witold Lutosławski’s Symphonic Variations will be the first live experience of classical music many in the audience will have heard. Lutosławksi’s short introduction to tonal colour is the orchestral equivalent of opening up a paintbox and diving in: there can be few pieces more likely to make a convert for life. Elgar Symphony 2 Pianist, organist, composer, arranger Edward Elgar: Symphony No. 2 in E flat for Piano Solo After the outstanding success of Elgar’s First Symphony in 1908, the composer was at the peak of his popularity, with critical success and growing international acclaim. Full of confidence, a Second Symphony soon followed, premiered in 1911. It was dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII who had died in May 1910, and to whom the symphony was originally planned as a tribute. Those expecting the ringing, positive outcome of the First Symphony were disappointed.

Although relatively well received, the Symphony lacked the success of earlier works, Elgar complaining that the audience were like “stuffed pigs.” The world was quickly changing and Elgar’s score reflects the tensions of the era. It was not until after the chaos of the First World War that the questioning nature of the Symphony was fully appreciated. The work is possibly his richest and most complex, both musically and emotionally, encompassing the heights of joy to the depths of despair. This piano arrangement is a fully playable and sympathetic version of the score, that attempts to capture the colours, emotions and sweep of the original. Although at times virtuosic, the textures are at the service of the music, and never for empty showmanship. The arrangement can be enjoyed by pianists who appreciate Elgar’s music and want to experience first hand this glorious work. Group Travel News - Major exhibition celebrates Elgar’s second symphony Major exhibition celebrates Elgar’s second symphony Date Posted: 12/06/2011 Worcestershire’s Elgar Birthplace Museum has unveiled a major new exhibition to mark the centenary of the first performance of Elgar’s second symphony.

Now running until the 6th November, the exhibition traces the composition and performance of the second symphony, with recordings available to purchase. Featuring a number of items from the Museum’s collection, highlights include a letter from George Bernard Shaw and Elgar’s autograph manuscript score. Elgar’s second symphony was first performed at the Queen’s Hall, London on 24th May 1911, conducted by Elgar and dedicated to the memory of his late majesty King Edward VII. Despite a rather more inauspicious introduction than the composer’s first symphony, gradually the second symphony has eclipsed the first, both in critical acclaim and in the hearts of the public, and is now considered to be one of Elgar’s greatest achievements. Parties of ten or more people planning a visit to the Elgar Birthplace Museum can take advantage of a variety of discounts and group packages, and visits will be tailored to suit the requirements of individual groups.

For further information telephone: 01905-333224 or log onto Elgar - A Short Biography A Short Biography by Ian Lace Elgar was born on 2nd June 1857 at Broadheath, a village some three miles from the small city of Worcester in the English West Midlands. His father had a music shop in Worcester and tuned pianos. The Elgar shop in the centre of Worcester The young Elgar, therefore, had the great advantage of growing up in a thoroughly practical musical atmosphere. He studied the music available in his father's shop and taught himself to play a wide variety of instruments. It is a remarkable fact that Elgar was very largely self-taught as a composer - evidence of the strong determination behind his original and unique genius. His long struggle to establish himself as a pre-eminent composer of international repute was hard and often bitter. For many years he had to contend with apathy, with the prejudices of the entrenched musical establishment, with religious bigotry (he was a member of the Roman Catholic minority in a Protestant majority England) and with a late Victorian provincial society where class consciousness pervaded everything.

Throughout the 1880s and the 1890s his experience grew and his style matured as he conducted and composed for local musical organisations. He also taught the violin and played the organ at St. George's Roman Catholic Church in Worcester. Alice Elgar In 1889 he married one of his pupils, Caroline Alice Roberts, daughter of the late Major- General Sir Henry Roberts who had enjoyed a distinguished career with the British army in India. She married Edward in opposition to her aunts and cousins (her mother had died in 1887) who considered that in marrying the son of a mere tradesman, a music teacher without prospects, she was marrying beneath herself. Nevertheless, Alice with determination and a dogged faith in Edward's emerging genius, played a vital part in the development of Elgar's career. Slowly, and through such early works as Froissart (1890), the Imperial March (1897) and the cantatas King Olaf (1896) and Caractacus (1898), his reputation began to spread beyond the area immediately around his native Worcestershire.

His first big success came with the Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) in 1899. Dedicated to "my friends pictured within", this work, which is a masterpiece of form and orchestration, showed that Elgar, by that time, had surpassed the other leading English composers of his day, both in technical accomplishment and sheer force of musical personality. The final page of the manuscript score of The Dream of Gerontius After Sea Pictures , a song cycle for contralto and orchestra (1899), came one of Elgar's greatest religious compositions - The Dream of Gerontius - based on Cardinal Newman's poem about a soul's journey through to its judgement and beyond. Unfortunately, due to inadequate rehearsals, the first performance at Birmingham in October 1900 of this complex and original work proved to be a failure, but the majority of the critics recognised the work's greatness. Fortunately, the composition was rescued from oblivion by a second performance under Julius Buths at Dusseldorf in December 1901, and again at the Lower Rhine Festival in Dusseldorf in May the following year. Following this latter performance, Richard Strauss praised Elgar as the first English progressive musician.

After the initial failure of the Dream of Gerontius in 1900, Elgar was understandably depressed, but within a few days he had characteristically started writing again - an ebullient concert overture - Cockaigne (In London Town) which was successfully premiered in 1901. Confirming this success, in the same year came the first two Pomp and Circumstance Marches - the first in D major containing the famous trio section that was later to becomeLand of Hope and Glory. Elgar appreciated its worth; he had prophesied: "I've got a tune that will knock 'em - knock 'em flat! a tune like that comes once in a lifetime " Elgar had 'arrived'. An all-Elgar festival at Covent Garden was held in 1904, which included an exuberant new overture, In the South , written after a visit to Alassio in Italy. In July of that year, Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII.

By this time, Elgar's works were being performed both in Europe and in the USA In 1905, came the Introduction and Allegro for Strings , a masterly essay in string writing dedicated to Professor Sanford of Yale University. In 1906, Elgar was busy working on his great oratorio, The Kingdom , the sequel to The Apostles of 1903. These two works were based on an intricate tapestry of linking leitmotives in the style of Wagner. Elgar originally intended that there should be a cycle of three oratorios but the third part of the trilogy was never completed. Elgar conducting in EMI's Abbey Road No 1 studio in 1931 Elgar next began to concentrate on symphonic work. He had been planning a symphony (originally around the character of General Gordon) as early as 1898. Work began again in earnest during the winter of 1907-08, while he was staying in Rome. The Symphony No. 1 in A flat was first performed in Manchester in December 1908.

It was dedicated to and conducted by Hans Richter who said of it: "Gentlemen, let us now rehearse the greatest symphony of modern times, written by the greatest modern composer - and not only in this country". The work was received with tremendous enthusiasm and there were a hundred performances of it in Britain and all over Europe and in America, Australia and Russia, etc. in just over a year. August Jaeger of Novellos (the music publishers) - Nimrod of the Enigma Variations - believed that the symphony's slow movement was comparable to those of Beethoven . A Violin Concerto in B minor followed in 1910 and then, in 1911, another symphony. The violin concerto was dedicated to Fritz Kreisler who gave the first performance. The score is headed with an inscription in Spanish: "Aqui esta encerrada el alma de .." ("Here is enshrined the soul of ."). Some say that he was referring to Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Millais. She was closely associated with Elgar and his music at this time.

The concerto is a difficult virtuoso piece similar in scale to the Brahms concerto but more richly orchestrated. The slow movement has a particular beauty and the last movement has a unique and magical feature - an accompanied cadenza where the strings are instructed that the pizzicato tremolando should be thrummed with the soft part of three fingers whilst the violin muses at length over ideas recalled from the earlier movements. Elgar conducting at Wembley The Symphony No. 2 in E flat , although by no means as immediately successful as its predecessor, is nevertheless probably Elgar's profoundest symphonic utterance. The score is prefaced by a quotation from Shelley: "Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight", suggesting that the work is not only about delight but also about the rarity of its occurrence. Elgar dedicated the symphony to the memory of King Edward VII, who had recently died but the composition is much more than an expression of national mourning for a much loved monarch. Elgar admitted to his friends that it symbolised everything that had happened to him between April 1909 and February 1911, and its roots went back even further.

He marked the score with two place names - Venice & Tintagel. In fact the Larghetto, usually assumed to be a funeral lament for the late King, begins with an idea inspired by the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, which Elgar had visited in 1909. Between the period of the Second Symphony and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, there appeared only two major works - The Music Makers , an ode for contralto, chorus and orchestra based on a poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1912), and a symphonic study based on Shakespeare's Falstaff (1913). The Music Makers is a deeply personal work with many self quotations from earlier works. It expresses the positive influence on society of the creative artist but it also underlines his loneliness and vulnerability. Elgar considered Falstaff to be amongst his very best works - a view shared by many professional musicians - but after the personal outpourings of the great oratorios, the symphonies and the violin concerto, Falstaff seemed relatively detached and this probably explains its comparative neglect. The First World War depressed Elgar deeply.

Apart from a few patriotic pieces, incidental music for a children's play entitled The Starlight Express (1915), settings of three war poems by Laurence Binyon The Spirit of England (1915-17), now recognised as one of the composer's masterpieces, and the ballet The Sanguine Fan (1917), nothing major emerged. It was not until 1918 and 1919 that his final great period produced the three chamber works - the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet , both in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor and the Cello Concerto in E minor , his last great masterpiece. Audiences were quick to note the change - no longer the pomp and swagger of earlier days. Here was a new Elgar - less assured, more contemplative, more withdrawn. Speaking of the Cello Concerto, Elgar's biographer Ian Parrott says: "It is a work apart, by a lonely man in war-time who sees that artistic criteria have altered irreversibly". In 1920, Lady Elgar died and with her died much of Elgar's inspiration and will to compose.

She had organised his household and ministered to his comforts. For a long time she saved him hours of drudgery, for instance by ruling bar lines on score paper. She walked miles in all weathers to post precious parcels of manuscript and proofs. In the early days of their marriage she had collaborated with him to produce such works as Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands (1896) - Elgar's settings of his wife's poems inspired by holidays spent in Germany. At times when success seemed forever to be eluding him, she never lost faith. In short, she had been the driving force behind his genius encouraging him and proclaiming his talents at every opportunity. Elgar with Marco, his spaniel dog Throughout the 1920s, Elgar, saddened by his bereavement and by the social and musical changes brought about by the war, lived in virtual retirement, outwardly content to live the life of a country gentleman in his beloved Worcestershire with his dogs, sometimes emerging for the occasional visit to London or for a conducting or recording assignment. (He made a fine series of recordings of his own compositions for HMV).

Honours continued to be conferred on him: in 1928 he was created Knight Commander of the Victorian Order (K.C.V.O). About this time, it seemed that he had taken on a new lease of life for he began work on a number of large projects including an opera, The Spanish Lady and a third symphony. In 1933 he flew to Paris to conduct his violin concerto with the youthful Yehudi Menuhin, the soloist with whom he had recorded the work in London some weeks earlier. Whilst in France, Elgar took the opportunity of visiting Delius at Grez-sur-Loing. Both men had but one more year to live. In October, Elgar was found to be suffering from a malignant tumour which pressed on the sciatic nerve. Further composition became impossible and he died on 23rd February, 1934. © ELGAR SOCIETY 1979 . "For thirty years after his death in 1934, his music was considered to be 'out of fashion'. It was said to epitomise the Edwardian era and to have no relevance to a later age.

I believe, however, that it is far too great to be tied to one short period of history and that, in any case, it is music of so personal a nature that it can be described accurately not as 'Edwardian' but only as 'Elgarian'." Michael Kennedy - 'Portrait of Elgar' (Oxford University Press -1968) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ " His greatest music was, and often is, regarded as quintessentially English But when this has been done, there is still the paradox that appreciation of Elgar was shown in the first place by immigrants or foreigners of singular discernment " "They (the Elgars) were proud to be English; they were often concerned with the little as well as the large issues of national life; but they accepted it as axiomatic that national sentiment was valueless unless it was linked to the humane tradition of European thought " Dr. Percy M. Young - 'Elgar O.M.' (Purnell Book Services - 1973 edition) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Edward Elgar (2nd June 1857 - 23rd February 1934) - "Those years had seen change accelerate as never before in human history.

His response had been to seek the illumination of time remembered. For all those of his generation and the future who would feel the insight of retrospection, he had made of that evanescence his music." Jerrold Northrop Moore - 'Edward Elgar - A Creative Life' (Oxford University Press - 1984) Articles about Edward Elgar - tribunedigital-chicagotribune Elgar: Symphony No. 2 By Alan G. Artner | February 27, 1994 Elgar: Symphony No. 2; Sospiri; ElegyHalle Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra; John Barbirolli, conductor (EMI). Edward Elgar dedicated his Second Symphony to the memory of King Edward VII, and the entire work has since become an elegy to history on the turn. Barbirolli was a child of the Edwardian age, holding this symphony especially dear and finding in it a nostalgia and heartache that eluded all other conductors on record, including the composer and the work's chief modern exponent, Adrian... ENTERTAINMENT Concert Review: Grant Park Orchestra performs Elgar's First By Alan G.

Artner, Special to the Tribune | June 21, 2014 In a few days we'll observe the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the incident that brought about the cataclysm of World War I. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig called the period from just before the war - a period of unparalleled artistic creation - the "Golden Age of Security. " Today we frequently hear the music that questioned and challenged such security. But there also were remarkable pieces that celebrated the period's... Advertisement Enthusiasts unearth two lost songs by British composer Elgar Reuters | May 29, 2013 LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) - Two "lost" songs by British classical music composer Edward Elgar have been unearthed by researchers for a charity dedicated to the performance of his works. Elgar Works director John Norris said he delved into the "Land of Hope and Glory" composer's sketch book in the British Library to reveal completed songs "The Muleteer's Serenade" and "The Millwheel". Norris said he knew there were sketches for the two songs ...

ENTERTAINMENT Review: Changes in venue and program benefit Grant Park Orchestra By Alan G. Artner, Special to the Tribune | August 3, 2013 Friday night's concert at the Grant Park Music Festival was to have preceded a recording of music for and about children. But as conductor Carlos Kalmar announced from the stage of the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the recording had been postponed and on the concert Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Suite from "The Nutcracker" had replaced John Alden Carpenter's "Adventures in a Perambulator. " No matter. Kalmar's programs usually are so well made that one... ENTERTAINMENT Concert Review: Grant Park Orchestra performs Elgar's First By Alan G. Artner, Special to the Tribune | June 21, 2014 In a few days we'll observe the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the incident that brought about the cataclysm of World War I. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig called the period from just before the war - a period of unparalleled artistic creation - the "Golden Age of Security.

" Today we frequently hear the music that questioned and challenged such security. But there also were remarkable pieces that celebrated the period's... NEWS Enthusiasts unearth two lost songs by British composer Elgar Reuters | May 29, 2013 LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) - Two "lost" songs by British classical music composer Edward Elgar have been unearthed by researchers for a charity dedicated to the performance of his works. Elgar Works director John Norris said he delved into the "Land of Hope and Glory" composer's sketch book in the British Library to reveal completed songs "The Muleteer's Serenade" and "The Millwheel". Norris said he knew there were sketches for the two songs ... ENTERTAINMENT Review: Changes in venue and program benefit Grant Park Orchestra By Alan G. Artner, Special to the Tribune | August 3, 2013 Friday night's concert at the Grant Park Music Festival was to have preceded a recording of music for and about children.

But as conductor Carlos Kalmar announced from the stage of the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the recording had been postponed and on the concert Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Suite from "The Nutcracker" had replaced John Alden Carpenter's "Adventures in a Perambulator. " No matter. Kalmar's programs usually are so well made that one... ENTERTAINMENT Bard's the card for Mark Elder's second weekend of CSO concerts John von Rhein and Classical music critic | January 13, 2012 When even a staunch champion of Edward Elgar's music such as conductor Colin Davis admits that the British composer had an excessive fondness for "the grand gesture, great, big, surging and full of noise," what hope is there for audiences (at least American audiences) that forever associate his name with pompous marches trotted out at college graduation ceremonies? There is, of course, much more to Elgar's music than that, as his countryman, Mark Elder,... FEATURES Israel Philharmonic Muscling To New Level By Lawrence Johnson.

Special to the Tribune | January 13, 1998 The dual histories and fortunes of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the modern Jewish state are intimately interwoven, the orchestra having been founded by famed violinist Bronislaw Huberman in 1936, 12 years before the birth of the Israeli nation. It seems only fitting therefore that festivities commemorating the 50th anniversary of Israel should include a worldwide tour by the country's leading orchestra, which presented a concert led by music director Zubin Mehta on Sunday... NEWS Celebration of Elgar for the ages should begin right away By Alan G. Artner, Tribune art critic | June 10, 2007 The 1960 centennial of the birth of Gustav Mahler began the worldwide interest that has made his music today as popular as that of any Romantic composer. This year's sesquicentennial of the birth of Edward Elgar may do the same for him. But nobody is counting on it. Elgar, you see, was English, and like most English painters and sculptors -- yet not poets, playwrights, essayists or novelists -- his work is thought to be unexportable.

It's supposed to incorporate early... NEWS Celebration of Elgar for the ages should begin right away By Alan G. Artner, Tribune art critic | June 10, 2007 The 1960 centennial of the birth of Gustav Mahler began the worldwide interest that has made his music today as popular as that of any Romantic composer. This year's sesquicentennial of the birth of Edward Elgar may do the same for him. But nobody is counting on it. Elgar, you see, was English, and like most English painters and sculptors -- yet not poets, playwrights, essayists or novelists -- his work is thought to be unexportable. It's supposed to incorporate early... NEWS Chicago Humanities Festival By Julia Keller, Sid Smith, John Von Rhein, Alan G. Artner, Michael Phillips and Howard Reich | October 13, 2002 BOOKS 3C. FAY WELDON She's wickedly witty and wittily wicked--and, most recently, wildly controversial. When novelist Weldon was hired by Bulgari Jewelers to write a book featuring their products, purists howled and the Integrity Police approached with handcuffs.

Weldon offers her side of the story. --Julia Keller 7B. MICHAEL HOLROYD One of the best biographers in the business revisits one of his biggest hits: a multivolume biography of George Bernard Shaw. Holroyd, whose most... NEWS Chicago Humanities Festival By Julia Keller, Sid Smith, John Von Rhein, Alan G. Artner, Michael Phillips and Howard Reich | October 13, 2002 BOOKS 3C. FAY WELDON She's wickedly witty and wittily wicked--and, most recently, wildly controversial. When novelist Weldon was hired by Bulgari Jewelers to write a book featuring their products, purists howled and the Integrity Police approached with handcuffs. Weldon offers her side of the story. --Julia Keller 7B. MICHAEL HOLROYD One of the best biographers in the business revisits one of his biggest hits: a multivolume biography of George Bernard Shaw. Holroyd, whose most...

NEWS Arthur Kristian Edward Elgar April 12, 2000 Arthur Kristian Edward Elgar, 70, a carpenter and descendant of composer Edward Elgar, died Sunday, April 9, in his home in Wonder Lake. Mr. Elgar was born in England but came to the United States in 1949. Formerly of Texas, he moved to New York City and became a U.S. citizen in 1952. Mr. Elgar served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He had worked as a carpenter and as a director of environmental services in a hospital. He retired in 1993. Survivors include his...

ENTERTAINMENT Bard's the card for Mark Elder's second weekend of CSO concerts John von Rhein and Classical music critic | January 13, 2012 When even a staunch champion of Edward Elgar's music such as conductor Colin Davis admits that the British composer had an excessive fondness for "the grand gesture, great, big, surging and full of noise," what hope is there for audiences (at least American audiences) that forever associate his name with pompous marches trotted out at college graduation ceremonies? There is, of course, much more to Elgar's music than that, as his countryman, Mark Elder,... FEATURES Israel Philharmonic Muscling To New Level By Lawrence Johnson. Special to the Tribune | January 13, 1998 The dual histories and fortunes of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the modern Jewish state are intimately interwoven, the orchestra having been founded by famed violinist Bronislaw Huberman in 1936, 12 years before the birth of the Israeli nation.

It seems only fitting therefore that festivities commemorating the 50th anniversary of Israel should include a worldwide tour by the country's leading orchestra, which presented a concert led by music director Zubin Mehta on Sunday... NEWS Arthur Kristian Edward Elgar April 12, 2000 Arthur Kristian Edward Elgar, 70, a carpenter and descendant of composer Edward Elgar, died Sunday, April 9, in his home in Wonder Lake. Mr. Elgar was born in England but came to the United States in 1949. Formerly of Texas, he moved to New York City and became a U.S. citizen in 1952. Mr. Elgar served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He had worked as a carpenter and as a director of environmental services in a hospital. He retired in 1993. Survivors include his... ENTERTAINMENT Elgar: Symphony No. 2 By Alan G. Artner | February 27, 1994 Elgar: Symphony No.

2; Sospiri; ElegyHalle Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra; John Barbirolli, conductor (EMI). Edward Elgar dedicated his Second Symphony to the memory of King Edward VII, and the entire work has since become an elegy to history on the turn. Barbirolli was a child of the Edwardian age, holding this symphony especially dear and finding in it a nostalgia and heartache that eluded all other conductors on record, including the composer and the work's chief modern exponent, Adrian... Symphony guide: Elgar's 2nd | Music | The Guardian 50 greatest symphonies Symphony guide: Elgar's 2nd Dismiss Elgar as a purveyor of fusty romanticism at your peril. This symphony glows with a strange, veiled radiance and reveals his true colouristic genius Pinterest I admit it.

I used to think Elgar was a composer who could be encapsulated by the clichés of the Last Night of the Proms and his handlebar moustache, that he and his music were mired in a British backwater of fusty romanticism that was outdated even in its own time, and doomed forever only to speak of ludicrous Imperial ambition and patriotic stiff upper lips. Chromolithograph - published 1912 - of Edward Elgar. Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images. The piece that first opened my ears to the idiocy of my thinking about Elgar was the Second Symphony, especially its slow movement . This music glows with a strange, veiled radiance that is one of the most special sounds a late-romantic composer ever conjured from the orchestra. There's a particular passage of unsettling visionary power (you hear it twice in the movement) in which Elgar simultaneously dissolves and recomposes his orchestra.

A long-breathed melody happens somewhere in the strings and woodwinds - even in the score it's difficult to see precisely how and where the tune is being played, such is the richness of Elgar's orchestral writing - but surrounding it is a gossamer tracery of harp lines and of divided violin, viola, and cello parts that glitter and shimmer. The noble outline of the melody is transformed into a much more ambiguous dream-state by an astonishing feat of orchestral imagination, in which colour and timbre become a way of feeling. It's as sensuous a soundworld as Wagner found in Parsifal , it's as precisely heard and ethereally effective as anything in Debussy . But its expressive combination of tenderness and melancholy is something that belongs definitively to Elgar. Elgar the colouristic genius: that's just one possible way of hearing one part of the Second Symphony. There are many more: the whole piece is staged as contrast between an outer world of large-scale symphonic structure and an inner, private realm of dream, doubt, and sometimes nightmare.

Elgar's unique mastery in this huge, hour-long piece is that he creates enough symphonic momentum to carry you through the music's architecture, while at the same time undermining that monumentality with moments of visionary stasis, lyricism, and, occasionally, violence. And you feel the expressive impact of these remarkable passages precisely because they come within the framework of this gigantic symphonic design. My point is this: Elgar's Second Symphony isn't just a strikingly modern phemomenon for 1911, when Elgar conducted its world premiere at the Queen's Hall, which belongs right up there with the greatest pre-first world war symphonies that were being written anywhere in Europe. The Second Symphony dared things that are still strikingly contemporary and achingly moving. Elgar second symphony's dedication to King Edward VII Photograph: theguardian.com A heady mix of influences in Elgar's private and public lives came together in this symphony.

There was his relationship with Alice Stuart-Wortley , his muse and inspiration around this time, to whom he wrote that he had "shewn my soul" in this music; parts of the symphony were written in Venice, whose St Mark's may have inspired the opening of the slow movement and the scherzo; the piece is dedicated to the memory of Edward VII, who had died in 1910, and the slow movement is often thought of as a monarch-memorialising funeral march, but the music is surely also inspired by close friends who had died in recent years; and Elgar appended a quotation from a Shelley poem – Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight! – to the score. That sense of struggle, of nagging doubt below the apparently confident surface, of that elusive attempt to capture the spirit of delight, is there right at the very beginning of the symphony , when the opening note has to wrench itself into being in the strings and woodwinds for a few tortured seconds before it blossoms into the first melody.

Even more clearly, you hear it at the centre of the movement , which is becalmed in a strange stasis of limpid but extraordinarily detailed colours – listen to the way the melodies are shared between the strings, and surrounded by a weird chromatic halo of harps and woodwind writing – before the main tune returns, with a spirit of somewhat forced triumph. The scherzo contains the symphony's nightmare, a crescendo that inundates the orchestra with a huge wave of rhythmic power. It's a moment of bewildering violence in the midst of the scherzo's otherwise filigree virtuosity. And it represents, Elgar said, "the madness that attends the excess or abuse of passion" – a telling phrase in the context of Elgar's life at the time – and linked it to a horrifying image in a Tennyson poem that imagines a conscious corpse in the grave being run over by horses whose hoofs, " beat, beat into my scalp and brain ".

At the premiere, having got to the end of the deceptively serene finale (the symphony closes with a radiant quietness, the opposite of the tumult of triumph that had capped his First Symphony) Elgar was bemused by the less-than rapturous reaction of his audience. He asked the orchestra's leader, WH Reed, "What's the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs". Rather than the porcinity of the public, I think that incomprehension is proof instead of the symphony's enormous expressive richness and complexity. This piece is essential Elgar because its rhetoric is the exact opposite of obvious emotionalism or taken-for-granted symphonic grandiosity. It's ambiguous, elusive, multi-layered, which is why it's so emotionally powerful – and why it's one of the 20th century's most important symphonies. Five key recordings Edward Elgar/London Symphony Orchestra : the original recording and still exemplary - there's still more desperation and surging energy in Elgar's own recording than any that have come after. And you can hear part of the rehearsals from the sessions in 1927 here .

Colin Davis/London Symphony Orchestra : huge intensity and lyricism from Davis and the LSO recorded live at the Barbican in 2002. Mark Elder/The Hallé : Elder and his Manchester players prove why they've created a new performance practice for Elgar - and Sir Mark recites Shelley, too. Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 63 Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 63 About the Work National Symphony Orchestra David Zinman conductor/Peter Serkin, piano © Richard Freed Elgar began work on his Second Symphony in October 1909, making use of sketches from as early as 1903; after interruptions for travel, his concentrated effort began about a year later and the score was completed on February 28, 1911. Less than three months later, on May 24, Elgar conducted the premiere in a Queen's Hall concert of the London Symphony Orchestra. The work enters the repertory of the National Symphony Orchestra in the present concerts.

The score, dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII, calls for 3 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, 2 harps, and strings. Duration, 53 minutes. ______________________________________________ In the work that established him as a major orchestral composer, the Enigma Variations of 1899, Elgar painted miniature portraits of himself, his wife, and several friends and acquaintances. In his subsequent orchestral works there was to be some degree of programmatic or philosophic content, and much of it was to be more �enigmatic� in this respect than the Variations. The Second Symphony contains references�some overt, some hidden�to individuals Elgar knew, and the work as a whole was described by him as �the passionate pilgrimage of a soul.� This �passionate pilgrimage� is manifest in every section of the work, but this symphony is no a chronicle.

The Second is a good deal more inward than its predecessor, a work whose general theme Elgar identified as �a wide experience of human life, a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future.� The hope thus expressed was itself a gesture that was anything but introspective, for it related to the severe economic depression that afflicted England at the time and to various upheavals in Europe, factors that left very little but hope in the way of resources on the part of Elgar and the national community with which he identified. In contradistinction to the grandly affirmative character of the First Symphony, the Second is not only more intensely inward-looking, but has a decidedly tragic cast. In the score, Elgar inscribed two lines from Shelley's Invocation : �Rarely, rarely comest thou,/Spirit of Delight.� In private correspondence and conversation he quoted further from Shelley to express the mood in which he had composed the symphony: �I do but hide under these notes,/Like embers, every spark of that/Which has consumed me.� What was that consuming force?

While the sketches for this work may be traced back to 1903 and Elgar got to work on it in earnest in October 1909, he broke off after a short while and only returned to the project the following October; but then he applied himself with such fervor that he had the long score finished and fully orchestrated in little more than four months. He himself noted that he had �worked at fever heat,� and that he had �recorded last year in the first movement��but precisely what from 1910 he recorded in the music, he never made clear. Elgar was for some years in love with Mrs Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the painter John Everett Millais. She�not Lady Mary Trefusis, who was sailing to Australia�was the inspiration for the penultimate Romanza section of the Enigma Variations , and it was to her that Elgar alluded alluded in his curious Spanish inscription in the score of his Violin Concerto, which preceded the Second Symphony by about a year: �Aquí está encerrada el alma de . . . . . � (�Here is enshrined the sould of . . . . .

�) He in fact wrote to Alice Stuart-Wortley of the Violin Cocnerto as �our own concerto,� and of the Second Symphony as �our symphony,� a work in which �I have written out my soul.� But the symphony is not �about� Alice Stuart-Wortley, or �about� Edward VII, as is sometimes assumed because of the dedication. The full wording of the dedication makes it clear that the work was conceived neither as a memorial nor as a portrait of the King, but simply as a work Elgar felt worthy of being offered as a tribute: Dedicated to the Memory of His Late Majesty King Edward VII. This Symphony, designed early in 1910 to be a loyal tribute, bears its Present dedication with the gracious approval of His Majesty the King [George V]. March 16th 1911. At the end of the score are two place-names, Venice and Tintagel.

Elgar had visited Venice in 1909 and had visited the dramtic Cornish site of Arthurian legend in the spring of 1910, a few months before he galvanized himself to pick up his thoughts on the Second Symphony and get down to work on it. There are specific mementos of that Italian visit in the third movement of the symphony, and there are portraits of a sort in the movements that precede and follow it, but nothing to explain �Tintagel,� except perhaps the generally darkish, romantic mood that made the entire work, in respect to Mrs Stuart-Wortley, �our symphony.� Elgar's distinguished biographer Michael Kennedy has written of the sinister and weird spirit that pervades [the Second Symphony], the strange throbbings, the veiled harmonies, the violent outburst in the scherzo�a spirit which reminds us that the Symphony is contemporary with Mahler's Ninth. The premiere of this work in fact took place six days after the day on which Mahler died without having heard his Ninth of the other segments of his tripartite farewell to life.

Elgar was not taking leave in his Second Symphony�he had 23 years and several major works still ahead of him�but he was brooding productively on the human condition, as Mahler had done in his different but similarly intense way. Irrespective of whether Elgar actually invented the term nobilmente in musical usage, he made it very much his own, most especially with his use of it in the opening movements of his two completed symphonies. The first movement of the Symphony No. 2� Allegro vivace e nobilmente �commences with a vigorous statement of its theme, without a preliminary introduction. The second part of this theme, as noted by Donald Francis Tovey and numerous other commentators, is a descending figure which apparently represents the �Spirit of Delight� in the Shelley citation.

This motif is to be the work's �motto,� recurring in one form or another in each succeeding movement, �and,� as Tovey observed, �generally with a wistfulness as if it referred to something no longer, nor not yet, present in the impetuous strength displayed here.� That �impetuous strength� propels the opening material in its original exuberance at some length before the contrastingly lyric second theme makes its first appearance. Following a still more energetic return of the opening material, a motif that had been introduced by the cellos just after the entrance of the second theme is reintroduced in a somewhat menacing frame. This passage, Elgar said, is �a sort of malign influence wandering through the summer night in the garden.� The mood is dispelled by a comforting appearance of the �motto,� leading to an exciting conclusion built on the opening material. That the second movement ( Larghetto ) might have been taken for an expression of national mourning is easy to understand, given the timing of events. The music was indeed conceived as an elegy, but not for the King, as Elgar made clear in his dedication.

The slow movement had been sketched in 1904, in response to the untimely death of Alfred Rodewald, who was neither a royal nor a celebrity of any sort, but simply a Liverpool businessman�and an especially dear friend whose loss, according to the already quoted Michael Kennedy, �unhinged� Elgar. This very noble movement is in the nature of a funeral march which, like the corresponding section of the Eroica , leaves behind any thought of a specific individual or occasion. After the big gestures, the �Spirit of Delight� motif leads to the profoundly affecting quiet conclusion. The third movement is not labeled a scherzo, but simply �Rondo: Presto. � It begins playfully, with a stunning display of Elgar's mastery as a colorist. The opening tune is one he borrowed from street musicians he heard in Venice. A brief tranquil passage leads to the deomoniacal middle section, recalling and expanding upon the �menacing� episode in the first movement. Another Italian memory, Elgar's having seen police officers fire on striking workers in Rome, is said to have been the impetus for this episode, in which driving percussion eventually swamps the rest of the orchestra.

(Elgar described this as being �like that horrible throbbing in the head during some fever.�) When the fury subsides, the movement's opening playfulness returns. The concise, dramatic movement was summed up by the composer as �wild and headstrong with soothing pastoral strains in between and very brilliant.� The opening of the final movement ( Moderato e maestoso ) is expansive and unhurried, but not without vigor. It is very British, in the sense in which Elgar himself gave definition to that term in music�and to �Edwardian,� one might say, without reference to the King but simply by way of labeling the personal style of Edward Elgar in his music. The easygoing momentum of the opening gradually yields to an undercurrent of agitation. A proclamative theme, broad and sweeping (said to be a tribute to the conductor Hans Richter, the most eminent of Elgar's champions from the days of the Enigma Variations ), leads to a brief fugal episode, following which a peak of excitement is reached swiftly, with a piercing alarum sounded by the trumpet.

Following some restrained, meditative passages, the movement's opening theme returns, more confidently assertive than before, and builds resolutely to a less exciting but more sustained climax. Instead of pushing on to the expected conventional conclusion, the music falls back, making way for the radiantly transformed �Spirit of Delight� motto and an extended epilogue bathed in warm sunset hues. Related Artists/Companies BBC - Radio 3 - Elgar/Symphony No. 2 3 Rondo: Presto 4 Moderato e maestoso Following the spectacular success of his First Symphony, performed almost 100 times within a year of its premiere in 1908, Elgar must have felt encouraged to write another. After all, he still had plenty of unused sketches (he took a musical sketchbook with him on his country walks, and jotted down ideas even in company). But the next major project was the Violin Concerto, one of his most overtly emotional works, which had its first performance in November 1910. He got down to work on the Second Symphony almost immediately afterwards and finished it, amazingly quickly, in early March 1911.

Oddly enough, the first performance, in which Elgar himself conducted the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, was far from the triumph the First Symphony had been and the audience’s response was somewhat muted. ‘What is the matter with them, Billy?’ Elgar asked the orchestra’s leader, W. H. Reed: ‘They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs.’ But gradually, almost as if by way of compensation, writers about Elgar’s music have tipped the balance in the Second Symphony’s favour, describing it as more complex and more personal than the First. Trading one work against another is pointless and both Elgar’s First and Second symphonies have an equal claim to our esteem. The Second, though written for the same size orchestra with the addition of a high E flat clarinet and tambourine, certainly does have more complicated textures, and sounds more opulent. It requires the orchestral strings, in particular, to be athletic. As a violinist himself, and also a conductor with considerable experience, Elgar knew what he was asking. In both symphonies, the two harps make a very important contribution, sometimes cushioning the ensemble, sometimes giving it a pearly, luminous quality.

In the Second Symphony, the way in which themes migrate, transformed, from movement to movement is particularly subtle, and very natural. The work as a whole is also more mellow, less dramatic, than the First Symphony, whose sharp contrasts of key from movement to movement, or section to section, are avoided, although in the Second Elgar’s harmony is very mobile, chromatic and, for short periods, deliberately bewildering. The new symphony was dedicated to the memory of Edward VII, who had died in May 1910; yet despite the fact that the second movement is sombre, and rises to a searing expression of grief, Elgar claimed it had ‘nothing to do with any funeral march’. But he did point out a passage in the same movement, which he had sketched back in 1903, after the funeral of his friend Alfred Rodewald, the dedicatee of the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. At the top of the score, Elgar quoted the first two lines of a poem by Shelley: Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Which refers, almost certainly, both to the presence and absence of delight.

At the end he printed ‘Venice – Tintagel’ and said that the beginnings of the second and third movements respectively expressed the contrast between the interior of St Mark’s and the Piazza outside. However, Tintagel, the ruined castle on the Cornish coast that was to inspire Arnold Bax’s sumptuously picturesque tone-poem a few years later, hasn’t been identified with any particular part of Elgar’s score. These labels are surely no more than circumstantial, and don’t offer deep insights into the music. Elgar himself summed up the first movement as ‘tremendous in energy’, which it certainly is, with wide melodic leaps and lolloping syncopations in 12/8 time, occasionally relieved by 4/4. Elgar thought it was a composer’s job to invent melodies, not take them ready-made (he didn’t use folk tunes, for instance), and they appear in profusion here, so that the effect is of rhapsodic flow rather than hard and fast contrasts. As a symphony intended, at least nominally, to be a tribute to a larger-than-life monarch, its opening could hardly have been more appropriate.

But the first movement is far from all swelling pride, since, by way of development, it retires into a sort of nocturnal, dreamlike state, before struggling back (strepitoso) to reclaim its original confidence. The slow second movement (in C minor) begins with an echo of that dreamlike episode – second violins briefly taking the top line, above the firsts. Then it settles down into the blackest of cortèges. If this isn’t a funeral march, what is? The passage Elgar sketched after Rodewald’s funeral comes some way into the movement – an intricately fluttering, shimmering, ascending sequence, not far distant, in its sound-world and even its spirit, from Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ at the end of Wagner’s opera; it occurs twice, the second time pitched a tone lower in order to lead to the climax. The Rondo (in C major, much modified with chromatic notes) is a real scherzo, rhythmically playful, so to begin we’re not sure if we’re counting threes, twos or ones, before a sonorous second theme bounces in and settles the matter.

But again, darkness intervenes in the form of a nightmarish recollection of a passage from the first movement (originally with a theme for the cellos straining in their higher register) over a throbbing E flat pedal. The spectre passes and the ending is noisily playful. The final movement sets out in a purposeful way with a theme marked con dignità. Perhaps Elgar’s demons have been exorcised, for the second theme, bounding healthily in the strings, is positive, too, and soon waxes grandioso and nobilmente. The development – beginning with desiccated contrapuntal exchanges – turns into a quasi-battle scene, with a trumpet call whose top target note, a high B, orchestral players make it a point of honour to sustain longer than Elgar dared ask. Once calm is established, we are on course for a return to the starting-point and an effulgent climax which subsides finally into a quietly glowing ending. Programme note © Adrian Jack

Question: Elgar's Second Symphony was dedicated to the memory of which king?
Answer: EDWARD VII